How about evidence? What evidence is there that Trump or his aides in Trump Tower were under surveillance by government officials?
So again, is it reasonable to say that Trump has Bill and Hillary Clinton under surveillance today? (Because if they call a foreign leader, and the conversation is subject to intelligence collection, therefore Trump is tappping the Clinton’s phones – bad (or sick) guy!)
If their names are unmasked and the conversations are widely disseminated - yes.
So, it isn’t surveillance if their names are masked? 
What if the names are masked, but the intelligence is widely disseminated? Does that count as “wiretappping?”
Correct. If no one knows what you said, it isn’t “surveillance”.
Except we don’t really know if Trump was under surveillance. What we know this week is different to what we knew last week. What we know next week may be different to what we know today. It’s preposterous to suggest we have heard the last word on what was done to Trump surveillance wise. As of now the evidence isn’t quite there that Trump’s campaign was under surveillance, but you cannot possibly say it definitively was not.
WTF? If a private eye is watching me 24/7, but doesn’t tell anyone, it isn’t surveillance?
What fucking dictionary are you pulling this definition of “surveillance” from?
If a tree falls in the forest and no one ever knows it does, did it fall?
You apparently think that someone’s private conversations can be disseminated widely, attributed to him, without that person being surveilled. By magic, probably.
Surveillance is the intensive monitoring of a person or event. That’s all it is. Having been seen is not surveillance. Distribution of information has nothing to do with the term surveillance.
All these caveats and special circumstances you’re coming up with turn the word into something meaningless – which is frankly a favorite tactic of Putin and Trump.
Your analogy is broken, in multiple ways. The “Mafia Don” is obviously guilty of crimes, and is known to be someone who engages in crimes even if it’s not provable, while it has not been claimed that the people Trump’s people were talking to were at all criminal. You have the politician committing the crime of taking a bribe instead of just talking to to Mafia Don about some of his legitimate businesses. (You yourself pointed out this flaw in your analogy by insisting that you’re not accusing Trump of taking bribes). You don’t have the FBI breaking the law to unmask the name of the politician, in fact in the scenario you’ve constructed they’re probably required release the name. You don’t have the report that’s supposed to be secret getting so widely distributed (with the names illegally attached) that it gets reported on in the New York times. And the scenario implicitly uses a regular US court for the warrant instead of a FISA secret court with a 99.97% warrant approval rating.
So your hypothetical makes A an explicitly violent criminal instead of just ‘someone the government wants to spy on’, has B committing a felony instead of just talking to A, doesn’t have the C breaking the law to release the name of B, gives C a legitimate release information about B instead of the opposite, and (by implication) doesn’t have C use a sketchy secret court for it’s warrant. You’ve made A and B actually guilty, while completely removing guilt from C (and possibly D), which means the analogy really has nothing at all to do with the scenario at hand. The fact that B didn’t commit a crime in the real example and did in yours, and the fact that there’s a law against C attaching B’s name in the real example and not in yours is a really colossal difference.
Your analogy is even further off than RitterSports. A better analogy would be if a cop was running a speed trap and incidentally saw you visiting a strip club, then recorded that you were visiting the strip club and released that information widely enough that the paper was reporting on it even though it’s a crime for him to report your visit with your name attached. You can’t just add crimes to one participant and remove them from another and claim that the analogy holds.
As far as I know, the SOS’s calls to foreign leaders are all recorded or monitored by default, and I wouldn’t call that wiretapping because it lacks the element of secrecy. If an agency reporting to Obama was listening in on calls that Clinton thought were private and despite a law to the contrary attached her name to the reports and released the information about her calls widely (especially widely enough for the NYT to report on it), then I would say that Obama was spying on Clinton, and that it wouldn’t be unreasonable to say ‘wiretapping’ though it’s not the word choice I’d use. As far as I know such a sequence of events has not happened and no one is alleging that it happened.
I’m not getting into the debate, but WTF? How can anything that Nunes says now be trusted?
- but this might seriously hurt how Obama is remembered. Especially with the quick, flat denial Obama gave when confronted about it initially*
Not at all. It’s standard procedure for our intelligence agencies to monitor all communications involving foreign agents in the US, especially those from hostile nations like Russia. Our people in Russia and China are being monitored in the same way. It’s standard procedure. Incidental collection.
If you’re an American citizen who’s stupid enough to get caught planning seriously illegal and treasonous activities in these monitored communications, no one is going to give you a pass because you weren’t the target. That’s just not how this thing works.
The FBI had to take their initial evidence to a FISA court. Once they got the warrant, it was game on. One of the reasons we have the FISA court is to prevent using the intelligence agencies for politically motivated witch hunts. Short of asking for Comey’s resignation, Obama couldn’t have stopped the process if he wanted to.
You seem to have this completely backwards and you’ll have to take this up with Okrahoma, because he’s the one saying that Trump was definitively under surveillance. I’ve never said Trump wasn’t under surveillance, but so far, I’ve seen no evidence that he was.
Do you see the difference? Trump and his supporters: Obama had me under surveillance. Rest of the world: That’s a pretty serious charge, do you have any evidence?
All I’ve asked of Okrahoma is to disavow his claim that Trump was under surveillance. You seem to be saying the same thing but directing it at me for some reason.
First, I presented a hypothetical, not an analogy. Your initial statement was so bizarre to me that I had to make sure I understood where you were coming from. I’m still not sure. Second, we have no idea whether Trump or the campaign were violating any laws, none either way – the investigation is ongoing. And, while Russia isn’t a violent criminal (well…) their efforts have certainly caused some violence to our election process. And, if there were crimes happening, then circulating the names may have been totally legitimate. So, you’re jumping to major conclusions above.
That’s an interesting article, in that former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden raises the possibility that these were intercepted communications between two foreigners in which those people were talking about Trump aides. The names of Americans captured in such intercepts are supposed to be masked. But in some statements by Nunes, he seems to leave open the possibility that names were not unmasked, but one could tell by context who they were talking about.
Yo, Okrahoma, can you enlighten me if this scenario constitutes surveillance, in your opinion?
And it was excellent: succinct and clarifying.
To all: am I correct in thinking that our one and only source for the ‘unmasking occurred (and it was improper)’ claim is Devin Nunes?
If Nunes IS the only source, then why is anyone taking the claim seriously?
I look forward to the tortured defense of your position, Okrahoma. Though I confess, I have no idea what it is anymore. I suspect, neither do you.
I’m of the opinion that the DETAILS of any possible Russian collusion don’t really matter. And that the Putin / Trump autocratic comparisons are dangerous. They are dangerous because they lead Americans ( and Trump himself ) to believe there is some sort of equivalence.
Trump is an ambitious buffoon that owns a 3.5 billion dollar real estate empire largely built with other people’s money. Putin is a criminal mastermind that managed to steal one of the largest sovereign nations in the world with all of its natural and man-made resources and turn it into his own private piggy bank, complete with his own police force, court system and standing army. He is worth somewhere between 10 and 250 times what Trump is worth ( although much of this consists of assets purchased by other people at Putins request solely for Putins personal use.)
And Trump thinks he can cut “great deals” with this person.
The truth is that Putin holds all the cards regarding the “Russiagate” issue. If Putin wants to he can release or leak enough evidence to sink Trump. The truth is irrelevant, manufactured evidence is Russia’s stock in trade. ( When a Putin minion wants to acquire an asset such as a factory here’s how it works. He offers to buy it for maybe 5% of its value. The owners usually agree. If they don’t agree then they just forge papers changing the ownership, have them validated through their very own court system and if the owner objects they arrest or kill him, or both). This is who Trump thinks he can “make great deals” with.
I need to resist turning this into a wall of text and links which is easy for me when I get on this subject because there are so many outrageous stories about the dealings of this crime syndicate.
But I want to recall the Super Bowl ring story.
NE Patriots owner Robert Kraft met Putin at a reception in Russia. He was showing off his SuperBowl ring. He handed it to Putin who admired it (" I could kill someone with this"). Kraft held out his hand to take the ring back. Putin stuck it in his pocket, surrounded himself with bodyguards and walked out of the room. Kraft never saw the ring again. He did however, get a call from the White House who insisted that he draft a statement claiming he GAVE Putin the ring.
Conservatives, this is no time to play The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend. Russian stories do not have happy endings.
I’m pretty sure his position is no more sophisticated than yelling “Obama sucks!” and running away. Whatever argument fits those ends are his means.